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Association between ADHD medication and depression: A 10-year follow-up

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Re: Association between ADHD medication and depression: A 10-year follow-up

#111
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more horrifying to me that HN has turned into a kind of place where people will confidently assert their judgment something they have no knowledge about. My son has ADHD. There are other ADHD cases in the family, so we knew that could be the case with him, but we waited until he was in middle school to even try to check, because we didn't want him to "depend on drugs", as the trope goes. We got the diagnosis fro…

Glasses are not drugs. That's not at all equivalent. These drugs are altering brain chemistry and one's natural state so they fit into the unnatural environment that is school. It's horrifying to me that people are doing mental gymnastics to defend drugging kids who don't want to sit at a desk for hours every day memorizing useless information. If I was a kid today I'd fit the qualifications and be drugged to better…

You clearly haven't so much as an inkling of how debilitating ADHD can be.

Wish I could have been a proper part of this world we live in as a kid but my diagnosis and treatment only came in adulthood.

Re: Association between ADHD medication and depression: A 10-year follow-up

#112
post #43
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The study also does not claim to show a causal relationship.

As the parent of a child with ADHD that is medicated, it seems completely plausible that it could cause depression. When my kid has had too high a dosage (or accidentally takes a double dose) she's like a zombie, completely flat affect, and very little motivation. It's like it drains her life away. Part of the problem is that it's very difficult to get the right dosage for any given day because diet, metabolism, and…

I take phentermine (another legal amphetamine; partial doses), and this doesn’t surprise me at all.

The bipolar-level manic highs and depression/lows are very real.

The feelings of suicide and hopelessness creep up; I have enough personal awareness and grit to ignore it but it feels awful.

To avoid that creep-up, the best thing I found is to have “break” days at least once or twice a week. That is, no pills.

I doubt your daughter or others with ADHD have that luxury though.

Re: Association between ADHD medication and depression: A 10-year follow-up

#113
post #25

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"People who are diagnosed with ADHD at a younger age likely have parents who just don't want / know how to deal with issues." Once you have a child with ADHD, or if you are someone with ADHD, you will understand just how wrong you are. Until then, enjoy your bliss.

I formed this opinion from knowing many and seeing the way they are being / were raised. There's quite a bit of evidence to support this btw (outside of my observations). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1471-2431-12-50 > Approximately 10% of the sample was classified as having ADHD. We found depression, anxiety, healthcare coverage, and male sex of child to have increased odds of being diagnosed with ADHD.…

The links you provided don't support your argument in the way you think it does, but does reveal a gap in your understanding of ADHD.

ADHD has strong correlations with motor control and sleep issues, and is notoriously under-diagnosed amongst girls as they tend to present and be perceived differently.

ADHD is also understood to be hereditary and therefore given that the divorce rate for adults with ADHD is much higher than normal you should expect a higher incidence of children with ADHD growing up in a single family household. - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4071160/

Your second source is ridiculous, if you actually read the study they looked only at kids diagnosed with ADHD and then found that kids with tvs in their rooms watched more tv. It should seem obvious that this would be the case and im fairly certain you would get the same results if you looked at non-diagnosed kids (which again, they didn't)

Re: Association between ADHD medication and depression: A 10-year follow-up

#114

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The condition. It's abso-fucking-lutely the condition. Executive Dysfunction means you're screaming in your head to stand up and get work done, but your brain just keeps browsing hacker news. And not just monthly or weekly, but hourly. Sometimes even every few minutes. Diagnosed or undiagnosed.

I wonder if it's a "horoscope reading" kind of feeling, but I just identify so much with these descriptions of ADHD.

If you identify with these descriptions strongly, it's a pretty conclusive indicator that you have some degree of executive dysfunction. Whether you specifically have ADHD is up to a doctor to determine, but this type of executive dysfunction tends to be a hallmark of the disorder.

Re: Association between ADHD medication and depression: A 10-year follow-up

#116

It’s worth mentioning that ADHD also increases the risk of depression. Along with anxiety, depression is one of the most common comorbidities particularly in people with undiagnosed ADHD. I didn’t take ADHD meds as a kid, so I can’t speak to their effect on me. But when diagnosed as an adult, I had suffered nearly my whole life with chronic depression and anxiety. Both reached a crisis level a few years back, which w…

throwaway account ----

- ('if You Have ADHD, You Are Likely To Be depressed'): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkXpcs_an80

- ('why does your adhd make things so hard'): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svD71EJWOBU

I'm a "closet'ed" adhd person and these books have helped:

- Anxiety and Panic: How to Reshape Your Anxious Mind and Brain by Harry Barry

- ADHD 2.0 by Edward M. Hallowell M.D. & John J. Ratey M.D.

Re: Association between ADHD medication and depression: A 10-year follow-up

#117
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I formed this opinion from knowing many and seeing the way they are being / were raised. There's quite a bit of evidence to support this btw (outside of my observations). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1471-2431-12-50 > Approximately 10% of the sample was classified as having ADHD. We found depression, anxiety, healthcare coverage, and male sex of child to have increased odds of being diagnosed with ADHD.…

> Youth with ADD/ADHD engaged in screen time with an average of 149.1 min/weekday and 59% had a TV in their bedroom. Adjusting for child and family characteristics, having a TV in the bedroom was associated with 25 minute higher daily screen time (95% CI: 12.8–37.4 min/day). A bedroom TV was associated with 32% higher odds of engaging in screen time for over 2 h/day (OR = 1.3; 95% CI: 1.0–1.7). This does not imply ca…

> Medicated or not. They just have better support and lifestyle habits that minimize how much it might impact them.

If a disease can be resolved through changes in lifestyle is it a disease needing medication?

I think that is kind of the point, is it not? We can give the kids anti-depressants for being depressed or we can help them change their lifestyles. We can give the kids ADHD drugs or we can change their lifestyles. We can let the kids get diabetes, put them on drugs, or help them lose weight.

This is a ridiculous discussion. Yes, drugs can help and we may need to use them in extreme cases to aid in lifestyle changes, but shouldn’t the goal be improved life style

Re: Association between ADHD medication and depression: A 10-year follow-up

#118

Quoted post unavailable.

It's not just about school.

School is a place where several people in the same age group and similar social circles are expected to perform the same set of tasks, which makes it really useful as diagnostic criteria.

But treatment isn't (or at least shouldn't be) about only doing well in school. It's about doing well in life.

I finished elementary and high school by the skin of my teeth. I did it without an ADHD diagnosis or treatment.

I finally got diagnosed this year and started treatment. Why? So I can do my hobbies. So I can wash the dishes. So I can live my life instead of staring at it, waiting for my feet to start moving beneath me.

ADHD medication is not about school, because school is not the singular instance where a person's life is affected by the disorder. ADHD affects every aspect of my life, and so does treating it.

Re: Association between ADHD medication and depression: A 10-year follow-up

#119

I'm not a doctor, but as a family member and extended family member, I know that many bipolar children appear with ADHD in their early years and are treated with ADHD medication. They are treated with stimulants that have no effect on bipolar disorder.

This sounds scarier than it actually is, I think. ADHD is vastly more prevalent than bipolar disorder, and although we have various observational surveys to see if a patient ought to be diagnosed ADHD, the real gold-standard test according to the docs I've talked to is to administer medication. If you take stimulants and the symptoms go away, it was ADHD. If it doesn't work, try a few other types of stimulants. If none of those work then it probably wasn't ADHD and it's time to consider if there's something else going on.

Given that stimulants work nearly 100% of the time for ADHD cases, and don't pose a great risk to patients for whom ADHD is not the root cause, this is a sensible approach to take. As long as the psychiatrist follows up and makes sure the medication is working, and investigates if it is not.

Re: Association between ADHD medication and depression: A 10-year follow-up

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> worth mentioning that ADHD also increases the risk of depression I don’t think that’s true, I thought it was a correlation, not causation.

It doesn't matter what you think. It's fairly obvious even without any research that losing some amount of agency and struggling with things others don't can impact someone very negatively.

And the research backs that up so we don't have to rely on it being obvious!
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